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That a question i wonder. What are the features which make CoT, for you, the real successor of City Of Heroes ? My post is not made to underestimate the other successors but to list why CoT is not a superhero game but a successor.
I aim to publish a paper on that and i would like to gather the opinion of people on this subject. I will not refer to anyone (so MWM people could answer if they want) since i would like to make an objective article with no comparison to the other successor.

As i thought about what characterized CoH, to my mind there are some reasons and features but i can't list everything. I already think about those :
- the name : "City of"
- the power system : archetype / primary set / secondary set / tertiairy set
- the archetypes which are likely in the same vein, style as CoH
- the symbolic history of CoT (a great fire that destroy the town - like the end of CoH - which leads to a new world that is CoT)
- the travel powers
- added : costume customization
- added : power customization
- added : gearless system (something to confirm. do not confuse with inventory system)
- added : augment and refinement power system
- added : planned mission creator
- added : liely similar areas like harbour, parks, magical area…
- added : modern and nowadays environnements
- added : Deep character customization

Like Kiyori Anoyui said, the ONE thing that set CoX apart from other MMORPG was the customization, not just of the costume, but of the powers themselves. City of Titans feels like it is taking this aspect seriously. With the use of Aesthetic Decoupling, they've even added an additional dimension to customization in that two characters with identical powers can have completely different animations and visual effects.

After this there are two other characteristics that any successor must have. First, it has to be a gearless system. By this I mean that a character's power and capabilities should not be dependent upon the gear they have equipped as in other MMO. Yet at the same time, the sytem has to give us ways to tweak our powers with something akin to the enhancements City of Heroes had.
Second, it has to be a superhero game set in a modern, familiar, world to our own. The world has to have recognizable, believable factions and a stable of iconic NPCs that can form the framework for the world in which we play.

In my opinion, CoT is the best one that would have been CoH/V 2 in regards to graphical assets and customization, both in powers and content. They also appear to have a proper development strategy for creating a superhero/supervillain genre-styled game, along with their ethical stance on monetization.

Well, first, MWM has made it clear that they don't want a "who's the real successor" relationship with the other games. That being said, I'll be happy to tell you why CoH is the real successor for me :P.

First, +1 to all y'all above.

And, b) I personally think it's blatantly obvious that MWM is building a game that's just simply on a whole 'nother level (I'm southern, I can say that) than any of the others--including CO and DCUO.

It amazes me when people criticize CoT's first-out-of-the-gates-(possibly)last-to-finish status. It's clear that MWM is shooting much higher than the other games. How could that not take more time?

I guess maybe those critics want a game sooner rather than better, but I don't, and, anyway, that already exists. As Coby said, I want as close to a well-done CoH 2.0 as possible, not "kind of like the old CoH" but in a near or distant future setting. Or on a boat. Or on a goat.

On top of the endless customization, they had great animation, effects, sound, etc. Also it was so much fun to just use the powers. You could just run around on the streets just to experience the travel powers, or just run up to way to high level baddies just to see how you’ll fair. Just jumping up and down with wings or a cape brought joy to my heart. Maybe that’s just me xD

—

The Carnival of Light in the Phoenix Rising
"We never lose our demons, we only learn to live above them." - The Ancient One

Well, first, MWM has made it clear that they don't want a "who's the real successor" relationship with the other games. That being said, I'll be happy to tell you why CoH is the real successor for me :P.

I remind hearding something like that :) And, that's why, i try to be as unbiased by listing what makes CoT a successor of CoH ^^ After all, the other fans of the games could do the same drill :p

Frankly, the fact that I haven't seen anything from the others that really impresses me.

Ship of Heroes is coming close, but I'm a little leery about how "quickly" their development is going, something still seems a little off about that project. However, I'm open to the thought that maybe they just have some folks who REALLY know Unreal 4.

I've seen Valiance a few times over the years and their development seems a little schizophrenic. "Two steps sideways, four steps back..." is probably the easiest way I can describe the way the changes have felt.

Then there's City of Titans. You guys have trickled out information about what you've been doing, but we can clearly see that you are steadily plunking away. I may wish you had a more social presence and more to show us, but I also understand playing with your cards close to the chest. So, good luck, and I'll continue to support however I can.

The supportive community in the forums and their expectations to find a new home in CoT make this the best successor for me. For the most part, I feel this attitude extended into the game play in groups making the time I spent a higher quality of social interaction.
You take care of your "home" and treat your guests with dignity, respect and positive regard.

1) The setting. I think for superheroes to feel super, they need to be in a modern-day setting, not far off in the future.
2) The general impression I get from the dev team. They seem to understand what made the old game feel special and have a good plan for re-creating that feel without blindly copying it. They also have put a lot of work into the foundation of the game before getting round to the shiny top layer.

2) The general impression I get from the dev team. They seem to understand what made the old game feel special and have a good plan for re-creating that feel without blindly copying it. They also have put a lot of work into the foundation of the game before getting round to the shiny top layer.

This.

I believe that a real spiritual successor needs to understand what worked in the original and what didn't work. In addition to that, they need to be willing make it their own by building upon the original. CoT does all of that with their approach to their proposed game mechanics. SoH and VO (to some extent), on the hand, I feel does not. I feel like SoH is just copying the mechanics from CoH wholesale with trying do anything to set it's mechanics apart (besides stripping the existing archetypes to four classes, leaving it rather bare compared to CoH). VO, at least changed up the class system, so it seems like it's taking less risks than CoT (then again, I haven't peek into VO lately, so there is a lot of details that I might be missing).

Ship of Heroes is coming close, but I'm a little leery about how "quickly" their development is going, something still seems a little off about that project. However, I'm open to the thought that maybe they just have some folks who REALLY know Unreal 4.

Let me be frank here. They appear to be using a lot more off the shelf parts than we are, which would give them a more rapid development rate. This is because when we began on UE4, there *were* no off the shelf parts we could use, no marketplace to check in. We had to build everything from scratch. Today, if you go into the UE4 marketplace, you can pick up libraries of options for your new game. And these really do make a world of difference.

Let me use a real world example for comparison. There are two notable UE4 based survival games, Ark Survival Evolved and Conan Exiles. Ark Survival Evolved began development in mid 2014, roughly a year and a half before Conan Exiles began development in early 2016, and had to build most of what they have from scratch, like we have. Conan Exiles by comparison uses a lot, and I mean a lot, of off the shelf systems, including artwork from Funcom's other titles. Ark Survival's final release date was this past August. Conan Exiles is due for final release this May. Despite roughly 18 months development time difference, the final split between release dates is only 9 months, that's what having those off the shelf systems did in this case, nearly halving the development time gap, admittedly on much simpler games than what either Cot or SoH are making.

By our own estimates, if CoT were to start, today, instead of looking at a 5-8 year development timeframe, we would be looking at a 3-6 year development timeframe, all other factors being equal, just due to the larger library of options available now. Instead of designing our own combat engine, we could pull one off the marketplace. Instead of designing our own character, there are now options to use that simply did not exist. When these options did arrive on the market, design decisions already have been made which made these new pieces difficult if not impossible to use. To change would have required redesigning other systems, eliminating presumptions, etc. Not to say that we don't use any off the shelf parts, a few times we did find one which could be substituted without causing a disruption elsewhere, but we cannot use anywhere near as many as a newer game can. Plus, having finished libraries to use means that what they have will look more polished up front, because they get to skip that awkward middle stage in development. Add to it that CoT is being developed by volunteers in their part time while SoH is being developed by professionals in their full time, and their more rapid pace is easy to understand.

—

Technical Director

Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider

Ship of Heroes is coming close, but I'm a little leery about how "quickly" their development is going, something still seems a little off about that project. However, I'm open to the thought that maybe they just have some folks who REALLY know Unreal 4.

Let me be frank here. They appear to be using a lot more off the shelf parts than we are, which would give them a more rapid development rate. This is because when we began on UE4, there *were* no off the shelf parts we could use, no marketplace to check in. We had to build everything from scratch. Today, if you go into the UE4 marketplace, you can pick up libraries of options for your new game. And these really do make a world of difference.

Let me use a real world example for comparison. There are two notable UE4 based survival games, Ark Survival Evolved and Conan Exiles. Ark Survival Evolved began development in mid 2014, roughly a year and a half before Conan Exiles began development in early 2016, and had to build most of what they have from scratch, like we have. Conan Exiles by comparison uses a lot, and I mean a lot, of off the shelf systems, including artwork from Funcom's other titles. Ark Survival's final release date was this past August. Conan Exiles is due for final release this May. Despite roughly 18 months development time difference, the final split between release dates is only 9 months, that's what having those off the shelf systems did in this case, nearly halving the development time gap, admittedly on much simpler games than what either Cot or SoH are making.

By our own estimates, if CoT were to start, today, instead of looking at a 5-8 year development timeframe, we would be looking at a 3-6 year development timeframe, all other factors being equal, just due to the larger library of options available now. Instead of designing our own combat engine, we could pull one off the marketplace. Instead of designing our own character, there are now options to use that simply did not exist. When these options did arrive on the market, design decisions already have been made which made these new pieces difficult if not impossible to use. To change would have required redesigning other systems, eliminating presumptions, etc. Not to say that we don't use any off the shelf parts, a few times we did find one which could be substituted without causing a disruption elsewhere, but we cannot use anywhere near as many as a newer game can. Plus, having finished libraries to use means that what they have will look more polished up front, because they get to skip that awkward middle stage in development. Add to it that CoT is being developed by volunteers in their part time while SoH is being developed by professionals in their full time, and their more rapid pace is easy to understand.

I may be completely wrong in my assumptions here...but this explanation makes me so much more excited for CoT than SoH. I feel like a game going with so much 'off the shelf' game design and layout wouldn't feel the same as a game like CoT that the dev's created literally from the ground up. The game mechanics are unique, not off the shelf so they won't feel like every other game that just used an off the shelf system; the layout, the design, etc etc etc. I also think that this will, in the long run, keep CoT agile because they know their system in UR4 so much better because they made it, themselves. The foundation of the game is sure to be a clear winner.

One of the huge downsides to how SoH is proceeding on such a rapid pace (comparatively?) is just the fact that TIME is needed to create history, story-line, character progression, and all of those other details, some small and some large, that make a game what it is. I feel like CoT has had the time, through a slower development, to really polish their ideas and create a vast library of lore and ideas.

Again, I could be wrong, but that's what Doctor Tyche's explanation makes me think.

I may be completely wrong in my assumptions here...but this explanation makes me so much more excited for CoT than SoH. I feel like a game going with so much 'off the shelf' game design and layout wouldn't feel the same as a game like CoT that the dev's created literally from the ground up. The game mechanics are unique, not off the shelf so they won't feel like every other game that just used an off the shelf system; the layout, the design, etc etc etc. I also think that this will, in the long run, keep CoT agile because they know their system in UR4 so much better because they made it, themselves. The foundation of the game is sure to be a clear winner.

There are still downsides. There is a potential for bugs to crop up as you build upon your custom libraries. Established libraries can be a more thoroughly known quantity in terms of capabilities and performance. Also, in the long run there is a possibility that people working for MWM will have to make changes or bug fixes to these custom libraries and they will have to spend more time investigating/learning. Documentation can go a long ways towards shortening that part of the cycle, but then you also have to contend with coding styles too.

The upsides as you list them have many benefits, but there are also many pitfalls and hidden costs.

I'm thinking it's only really an advantage in the long run if the production schedule budgets for cycles of REFACTORING in which old code gets a review sweep and rewritten/tweaked to keep it refreshed and functional in the ways that are desired (understanding that the "ways" change over time). Periodic Refactoring helps weed out HAX in the codebase that can come back to bite you later on when everything turns into spaghetti code due to the simple accretion of years and years of development.

—

Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.

This might be a bit of a dissenting opinion, but I'm not entirely sure CoT is THE successor for me. In fact, I'm not sure any games are.

CoH has been gone for years now, and it feels like it's been long enough that the real need for a successor for me is more or less gone. So this whole discussion of wether this or that game is the real successor doesn't really matter all that much to me anymore. It did when I pledged for the Kickstarter, sure, but... City of Titans will have to stand on its own merits for me, and not on the basis of "Does it live up to my rose-tinted views of City of Heroes?"

But I do still like the idea of creating my own superhero, and perhaps a few characters of less than heroic persuasions, too. And I do still like the idea of a city as the world to do that in. I am going to spend so much time in the character creator getting things to look just right with this game. And I'm going to spend a lot of time just flying around, too. Because flying is awesome.

So yeah. I'm here at first because this looked like a successor, but I'm staying because it just looks promising. So far, there has been very few things I actively disagree on with this game, no red flags yet, even if there's a couple of yellow ones.

I may be completely wrong in my assumptions here...but this explanation makes me so much more excited for CoT than SoH. I feel like a game going with so much 'off the shelf' game design and layout wouldn't feel the same as a game like CoT that the dev's created literally from the ground up. The game mechanics are unique, not off the shelf so they won't feel like every other game that just used an off the shelf system; the layout, the design, etc etc etc. I also think that this will, in the long run, keep CoT agile because they know their system in UR4 so much better because they made it, themselves. The foundation of the game is sure to be a clear winner.

There are still downsides. There is a potential for bugs to crop up as you build upon your custom libraries. Established libraries can be a more thoroughly known quantity in terms of capabilities and performance. Also, in the long run there is a possibility that people working for MWM will have to make changes or bug fixes to these custom libraries and they will have to spend more time investigating/learning. Documentation can go a long ways towards shortening that part of the cycle, but then you also have to contend with coding styles too.

The upsides as you list them have many benefits, but there are also many pitfalls and hidden costs.

This brings up another point, though. The development team here that have worked on the mechanics for a long while know it. Someone using off the shelf parts and merely gluing them together may end up having to go back to the module creators to get help figuring out why X doesn't work just right for them.

The good thing about using a library is that it can provide a lot of functionality you need and save you all the time and cost of developing and supporting it.

The bad thing about using a library is that you're stuck with the assumptions the library writer made, and if something's broken, and there's no exposed interface you can use to fix it, you have to wait for them to fix it, or worse, you have to write your own version. "Patches welcome" isn't even an option in a closed-source ecosystem.

For this reason, the best libraries are the ones that stay focused on doing one thing. Shader library for one type of surface texture and integrates with others: good. Shader library that defines all the surface textures you can use, and requires you to go through it for everything or it'll break (i.e. middleware pattern): bad. (That's a made-up example, BTW.)

This might be a bit of a dissenting opinion, but I'm not entirely sure CoT is THE successor for me. In fact, I'm not sure any games are.

CoH has been gone for years now, and it feels like it's been long enough that the real need for a successor for me is more or less gone. So this whole discussion of wether this or that game is the real successor doesn't really matter all that much to me anymore. It did when I pledged for the Kickstarter, sure, but... City of Titans will have to stand on its own merits for me, and not on the basis of "Does it live up to my rose-tinted views of City of Heroes?"

But I do still like the idea of creating my own superhero, and perhaps a few characters of less than heroic persuasions, too. And I do still like the idea of a city as the world to do that in. I am going to spend so much time in the character creator getting things to look just right with this game. And I'm going to spend a lot of time just flying around, too. Because flying is awesome.

So yeah. I'm here at first because this looked like a successor, but I'm staying because it just looks promising. So far, there has been very few things I actively disagree on with this game, no red flags yet, even if there's a couple of yellow ones.

Well said and welcome to the dark side :) For a couple of years now, truth or not, I've felt more or less like a loner swimming against an overwhelming tide of CoH nostalgia (fueled somewhat by MWM's own desire to perpetuate that image in much of their earliest offerings). While this is understandable, I am encouraged by posts such as yours and by at least some of the more recent comments from MWM that that tide may be slowly turning. And that's a good thing.

My view is some people will invariably look at CoT and say "This is not CoH." That assessment will be accurate of course. My hope is most will see CoT as something better. I also believe some former CoH players will find a "home" somewhere other than MWM's version of Titan City. My hope is many will become a part of this new community here. But even more than that, my dream is we will eventually forge something that is less about displaced former CoH players and more about enthused CoT players... regardless of how or why they decided to come on board.

I believe in my dear, darling Devs! They are a darned sight savvier than this simple kitten from Kings Row!

I have every confidence that they have gained a great deal of insight from troubleshooting their own code and will make the proper selection of off-the-shelf software to bolster their proprietary works!

I believe in my dear, darling Devs! They are a darned sight savvier than this simple kitten from Kings Row!

I have every confidence that they have gained a great deal of insight from troubleshooting their own code and will make the proper selection of off-the-shelf software to bolster their proprietary works!

Cats are heat seekers. In the old days they’d sit on the CRT vents and overheat it if you let them.

If I were an overclocker and had a cat, I’d probably rig the radiator to heat a cat bed.

I got a radiator that's more like a vent that blows warm air, so I set up a blanket my cat likes in front of it. The first day it was their my kitty barely left that spot. It's still one of her favorite places :3